Krishna Software Newsletter May 1999
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS CHANCE!

Welcome to the KrishnaSoft's Electronic Newsletter.
This is the May 1999 issue entitled: "There is No Such Thing as Chance!".
WEB: http://www.krishnasoft.com; EMAIL: krishna@krishnasoft.com or vdayal@castle.net

This newsletter now goes to over 1100 people who either have an interest in Vedic science and/or spiritually entertaining multimedia technology.

[The following is the sixth of a series of articles to present the benefits of the Srimad-Bhagavatam. The multimedia Krsna CD published by Krishnasoft presents the summary of the 10th Canto with parts from the 5th Canto of this great spiritual masterpiece.]

Once a devotee named Bharata Maharaja ruled over our entire planet [and due to his reign our planet was called Bharata-varsa.] He ruled for many years but eventually renounced everything to take up spiritual life. However, during the course of his following spiritual practices he became attracted to a baby deer:

"Gradually he became so absorbed in thinking of this deer that his mind became agitated. As he became more attached to the deer, his devotional service slackened. Although he was able to give up his opulent kingdom, he became attached to the deer. Thus he fell down from his mystic yoga practice. Once when the deer was absent, Maharaja Bharata was so disturbed that he began to search for it. While searching and lamenting the deer's absence, Maharaja Bharata fell down and died. Because his mind was fully absorbed thinking of the deer, he naturally took his next birth from the womb of a deer. However, because he was considerably advanced spiritually, he did not forget his past activities, even though he was in the body of a deer." (Bhag. 5.8.Intro)

After the body of the deer, he took birth as Jada Bharata. Again due to Krsna's mercy, he remembered his previous life and therefore disassociated himself from all materialistic people. Internally, he remained absorbed in chanting and remembering Krsna although externally people thought of him as a crazy, dull person. Because of his silence and indifference to society, people mistreated him but he tolerated and remained fixed in Krsna consciousness. One night he was ordered by his stepbrothers and mother to guard a paddy field. There, the followers and servants of a dacoit chief bound him with ropes and brought him to the temple of the goddess Kali to offer him as a sacrifice. Still, Jada Bharata did not protest:

"At this time, one of the thieves, acting as the chief priest, was ready to offer the blood of Jada Bharata, whom they imagined to be an animal-man, to the goddess Kali to drink as a liquor. He therefore took up a very fearsome sword, which was very sharp and, consecrating it by the mantra of Bhadra Kali, raised it to kill Jada Bharata." (Bhag. 5.9.16)

However, goddess Kali could understand that Jada Bharata was a great devotee of the Lord and therefore, the deity's body burst asunder, and the goddess Kali personally emerged from it in a body burning with an intense and intolerable effulgence.

"She assumed a frightening body, as if she were prepared to destroy the entire creation. Leaping violently from the altar, she immediately decapitated all the rogues and thieves with the very sword with which they had intended to kill Jada Bharata." (Bhag. 5.9.18)

"Sukadeva Gosvami then said to Maharaja Pariksit: O Visnudatta, those who already know that the soul is separate from the body, who are liberated from the invincible knot in the heart, who are always engaged in welfare activities for all living entities and who never contemplate harming anyone are always protected by the Supreme Personality of Godhead, who carries His disc [the Sudarsana cakra] and acts as supreme time to kill the demons and protect His devotees. The devotees always take shelter at the lotus feet of the Lord. Therefore, at all times, even if threatened by decapitation, they remain unagitated. For them, this is not at all wonderful." (Bhag. 5.9.20)

Once Jada Bharata was forced to carry the palanquin of Maharaja Rahugana. However, Jada Bharata improperly carried the palanquin because he was trying to avoid stepping on ants. Maharaja Rahugana chastised Jada Bharata. Jada Bharata again tolerated the insults thinking it to be his deserved karma:

"In all reverse conditions, he [the devotee] agrees to suffer the results of his past life. He never accuses the Lord of putting him into a distressed condition.... As stated in Srimad-Bhagavatam (10.14.8): '...My dear Lord, one who constantly waits for Your causeless mercy to be bestowed upon him and who goes on suffering the reactions of his past misdeeds, offering You respectful obeisances from the core of his heart, is surely eligible for liberation, for it has become his rightful claim.'" (Bhag. 5.10.14)

However, this time Jada Bharata spoke the pure knowledge of Krsna consciousness and Maharaja Rahugana understood the exalted character of Jada Bharata. He immediately asked for forgiveness since offending a Vaisnava spoils all of one's spiritual assets.

"One who blasphemes a Vaisnava cannot be protected by anyone. Even if a person is as strong as Lord Siva, if he blasphemes a Vaisnava, he is sure to be destroyed. This is the verdict of all sastras. If one does not care for the verdict of the sastras and dares blaspheme a Vaisnava, he suffers life after life because of this." (Bhag. 5.10.25)

The instructions of Jada Bharata to Maharaja Rahugana about the science of Krsna consciousness can be found in the Fifth Canto, Chapters 11, 12, and 13. The exalted character of Jada Bharata cannot be imitated but we can do our best to to achieve spiritual perfection by the practice of our prescribed devotional service.

In the modern age, there is very little faith in God so people tend to believe that the events of material nature are just happening by 'chance' and there is no controller behind them. But the use of the word 'chance' is just exposing the ignorance of the person. There is no empirical or sastric (scriptural) evidence of anything ever happening by chance. When a person is ignorant of the details of the event, he labels the event as 'happening by chance'. For example, if I toss a coin, the result is heads or tails. If the coin came up heads, the explanation of why it came up heads can be described as 'chance'. However, if we understood all the forces involved when the coin was tossed, we can EXACTLY compute whether it will come up heads or tails. Because we do not know the forces involved, we call it a chance event. It's another way of saying, "I do not know."

We understand from Srimad-Bhagavatam and Bhagavad-gita that the entire material nature is working under the direction of Lord Krsna (mayadhyaksena prakrti suyate sa caracaram). According to our desire and what we deserve, material nature is making arrangements. One cannot change one's happiness and distress due to him by material means because such events are arranged by material nature. By engaging in devotional service, however, we can destroy the karmic reactions. By devotional service only, does the influence of material nature gradually cease to act on the living entity.

Some people go so far as to attribute even the creation of the universe including material nature as something that occurred by chance. They say the universe came out of the "Big Bang" and later evolution took over and created the varieties of species. This is mythology although it is placed within modern science books to give it the respect as something scientific. Who has seen the Big Bang? Who has seen evolution take place? No one. And no one can see it because according to their own foolish statements, it supposedly occurred by 'chance' millions of years ago and took millions of years to take place. In another words, it is unverified and unverifiable by any mortal human. And the essential question is how can it occur by 'chance' if the word 'chance' is only attributable to things we cannot understand. The word cannot be used to EXPLAIN things by treating 'chance' as some god-like agent. If anyone has read any theory based on the meaningless word 'chance' or synonymous words like 'randomness', 'mutation', 'chaos', 'gradually formed', 'astray cosmic rays', 'accidentally', etc., he should reject it as unscientific and speculative. Nothing is happening by chance.

"The whole cosmic order is under Me. Under My will it is automatically manifested again and again, and under My will it is annihilated at the end." (Gita 9.8)

Scientists spent years and years of research building computers which, as we showed in the February '99 newsletter, are far less complex than an insignificant honeybee. The computer only does what is in the program-- it never does anything beyond or less. Similarly, the universe is acting and moving exactly according to its design; there is nothing random or chaotic. We may not understand all the forces involved, but that does not mean we can label it as having occurred by 'chance' just as a person who has never seen a computer engineer cannot say computers came by 'chance'. One can take advantage of the supreme science books-- Srimad-Bhagavatam and Bhagavad-gita-- and know about all the forces involved in the universe-- gross, subtle, and transcendental. Then we can give a better analysis of how the universe may have originated, how it is being maintained and how the word 'chance' is meaningless. Hare Krsna.

Many new laptop computers now support resolutions of 1024*768 and to run at a lower resolution uses only a portion of the screen and leaves the rest of the screen black. Some laptops have a stretch feature to fill the display using pixel replication, but this lowers the quality of the text and graphics. Desktop computers use analog scaling and do not have this problem. An upgrade ZIP file (100 Kilobytes) can be now downloaded from the FAQ/Upgrade section: http://www.krishnasoft.com/kb.zip or http://www.castle.net/~vdayal/kb.zip. This file enhances support for higher resolutions giving full-screen 1024*768 graphics on laptops and desktops. This file is a compressed ZIP file which should be uncompressed into the same subdirectory or folder where the multimedia Krsna CDROM was installed (most likely C:\KSI\KB). Now when the Krsna CDROM is run, you can go to the File menu and select "Preferences...". In here, you should pick 1024*768. If your laptop does not support 1024*768, you should set the mode back to 800*600 or 640*480 and click "Okay". Of course, using 1024*768 mode does make the program slower, and if you have a slow machine, you can always go back to 800*600 or to the fully optimized 640*480 mode. The game portion automatically uses only 640*480 for optimal performance. If you are using a video projector, the VGA connector on your laptop should automatically perform analog scaling to fill the screen even at 640*480 so you should still get a full-screen animated picture. Here are the list of things enhanced or fixed in the upgrade:

(1) Support for full-screen graphics at 1024*768.
(2) Fixed memory allocation in Vedic Astronomy Game to make it work smoothly even on machines with only 8 MB memory (RAM).
(3) Num-Locked keypad now can be used to enter chapter and paragraph numbers.
(4) Diacritics can now be turned on or off for searching and extracting. This is now an item in the "Options" menu. With diacritics disabled, you can search easily; for example, to find the word "Krsna" or "Balarama", you no longer have to type "Kr.s.n.a" or "Balaraama" but just "Krsna" or "Balarama". [Typing the diacritics is optional.]
(5) Few other fixes and enhancements.

The small Krsna Book demo (KDEMO) has also been upgraded to support Windows '98/NT and 1024*768. This can be downloaded from http://www.krishnasoft.com/kdemo.zip. This is a 2.5MB compressed file dealing with the universal form of Lord Krsna.

Some people may be wondering if the multimedia Bhagavad-gita CDROM and multimedia Krsna CDROM w/Vedic Astronomy run under Windows 3.x, are they 16-bit software or 32-bit software? The fact is Windows 3.x is a 16-bit operating system whereas Windows '95/'98/NT are 32-bit operating systems. However, the software which runs on these systems can be 16-bit or 32-bit! You can run 32-bit software on Windows 3.x and run 16-bit software on Windows '95/'98/NT and vice-versa. The instructions within a program determine whether the software is 16-bit or 32-bit and NOT the operating system it runs on. Of course, if your entire program is based on using functions provided by the operating system, it's nature of 16-bit or 32-bit is pretty much determined by the operating system. However, you do not have to use the functions provided by the operating system; you can program your own. In Krishna Software's CDROMs, the majority of the functions including all of the graphics and memory functions are written from scratch in 32-bit Assembly language. The decompression modules are optimized in 16-bit and 32-bit instructions. A few functions of the 16-bit Windows 3.x are also used in the CDROMs. So it's using both 16-bit and 32-bit!

The language also makes a different. A 32-bit program compiled from a C++ language source code runs slower than a 32-bit optimized Assembly language program. Also, in some algorithms, 16-bit Assembly language runs faster than 32-bit Assembly or C++!

Krishna Software Inc. is dedicated to help people become peaceful and happy via spiritual science presented using modern multimedia technology. Our editorial policy as well as our mission is stated in the Srimad-Bhagavatam (10.2.37 Purport):
"One should engage in practical service to the Lord. In our Krsna consciousness movement, *ALL* our activities are concentrated upon distributing Krsna literature. This is very important. One may approach any person and induce him to read Krsna literature so that in the future he also may become a devotee.... By fully concentrating on distributing books for Krsna, one is fully absorbed in Krsna."

Srila Prabhupada also writes (Bhag. 7.13.34): "When I was alone in Vrndavana, I never attempted to construct mathas or temples; rather, I was fully satisfied with the small amount of money I could gather by selling Back to Godhead, and thus I would provide for myself and also print the literature. When I went to foreign countries, I lived according to the same principle, but when Europeans and Americans began to give money profusely, I started temples and Deity worship. The same principle should STILL be followed. Whatever money is collected should be spent for Krsna and not a farthing for sense gratification. This is the Bhagavata principle."

Krishna Software Inc. has produced some multimedia CDROMs and all the details of these CDROMs can be found at our website http://www.krishnasoft.com. Here is our current list of products:

(a) Multimedia Bhagavad-gita As It Is CD: Lord Krsna's eternal instructions to Arjuna and the rest of the world about Isvara (Supreme Lord), jiva (the soul), karma (activities), kala (time), and prakrti (nature). This is a 30-hour audio-visual CDROM.

(b) Multimedia Bhagavad-gita As It Is Hindi CD: Same as (a) but with Hindi translations; currently available on CD-R only.

(c) Multimedia Krsna CD w/Vedic Astronomy game: This is a 51-hour audio-visual presentation of the Krsna book and a Vedic Astronomy game based on the Fifth Canto of the Srimad-Bhagavatam. All on a single CDROM. Free sample demo downloadable.

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All glories to Lord Sri Krsna and His transcendental potencies! All glories to the Srimad-Bhagavatam, the literary incarnation of the Lord Sri Krsna!